Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’m doing a talk about bureaucracy and conflict in universities tomorrow, and found myself re-reading this gem from the Hitchhiker’s Guide: “But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.” “Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. YouContinue reading “FIFTY SIX”

“Oh, what have we done! It’s a biblical question, and we do not seem able to pull ourselves out of its familiar—essentially religious—cycle of shame, denial, and self-flagellation. This is why (I shall tell my granddaughter) the apocalyptic scenarios did not help—the terrible truth is that we had a profound, historical attraction to apocalypse. InContinue reading “FIFTY FOUR”

“If white men are finding themselves adrift in an uncertain world, it is not the fault of feminism, or of anti-racism. Just because the rise of a new wave of feminist and anti-racist campaigning has coincided with the collapse of modern economic certainties, it does not mean that one caused the other. But instead ofContinue reading “FIFTY TWO”

Listen: Hungarian singer-songwriter morningdeer.

“The Way Things Are,” David Fullarton, from exhibit “Things That Happened and Things We Made Up.”

For Gersande, jokes from robots: “You have collectively reassured me that you are from Go Fuck Yourself. Because I am not familiar with this location, I cannot speak humorously on its merits and flaws. Do you have factories in Go Fuck Yourself? I was made in a factory. The funny setup is that robots makeContinue reading “FORTY SEVEN”

“My final prayer is that people do show up to his funeral as a show of pageantry. I hope they show up with large, decorated signs and billboards. I hope they line the streets leading to the funeral home, and I hope that they make sure they are seen. Finally, I hope every one ofContinue reading “FORTY SIX”

On a word for responding to failure: Many of us have a similar sense that these implausible rises must be possible, but the stories tend to stay strewn throughout our lives, never coalescing into a single dynamic concept… The phenomenon remains hidden, and little discussed. Partial ideas do exist — resilience, reinvention, and grit —Continue reading “FOURTY FOUR”

This song is on every playlist I listen to lately.

I found out about Future Voices through The Listserve. It’s an interactive, science fiction storytelling project that gets people to leave voicemails as though they’re being left for someone in the future (and intercepted in the present day). I’m going to leave one tomorrow.

Sarah Kenzior on Kyiv and disaster porn in Politico: “One could charitably see the apocalypsticle as dumbing up. At least the pictures were of the actual people in the conflict, instead of, say, characters from The Hills explaining Syria. Western websites were giving Ukrainian activists what they wanted: foreign media attention. “I am a native of Kyiv.Continue reading “FORTY ONE”